As 2021 began, the U.S., the UK, and the governments of the EU were all running huge deficits. Their economies were ailing. The political situation was tense—in the case of the U.S. and the UK, at times, unbearably so. This was democratic politics and intergovernmental diplomacy in the raw. It was a constellation one might have expected to light up the currency or bond markets, but they barely flickered. From the financial record, you would not have known that anything of any note was going on. Conversely, there was little financial turmoil to compound the political battles of December and
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